If I wire up a stereo mini jack as balanced 2tip 3ring and record stereo in SoundForge through the stereo mic input, I will have normal sound on left and inverted on right which I can later subtract from each other to get the 6db gain with noise cancellation,

plus if I run the notebook in mobile mode I will have four hours on the battery - thus up to four hours continuous recording at full bandwidth 48Khz with a nice big display

my notebook is very quiet from about 2 metres with the advantage of no scratchy sounds when input levels need adjustment

I purchased a Tascam DA-P1 recently, I think the extra cost will be worth it. I know it's not always the best but considering how durable these recorders are you might want to check out eBay for a used unit. Of course, take some time to talk with the owner before buying. But I see that a few have gone for around $600 or so on eBay, which is great considering they are $1500 retail (suggested price is at a ridiculous $2100). Then there is the Marantz CDR300 portable CD burner unit with XLR inputs at around $600 brand new. I've never recorded from a laptop, sorry...

the DA-P1 is a very desireable tool, but to be honest with you the more I experiment with my notebook the more I like the idea of recording direct to it.

I have done some soak tests and found that I can have Soundforge running with some real time DX plugins to give me multiband EQ and a warm compressor and reverb if I want it - all running to the hard drive live.

This of course cancels the need to grab DAT to the hard drive for later sync with the video so there is a workflow benefit too.

I think the deciding factor could well be who you record audio for and it's intended use. If everything is to be edited by you, on your computer, then a laptop has some distinct advantages as you have discovered. On the other hand, if the work is to be done on different computers or at a remote location, then you waste time dubbing DAT copies (you'd need to rent a DAT etc.) for your client.